Silent cessation comforts – cessation liberates

This article was originally published on .cult by Luis Minvielle. .cult is a Berlin community platform for developers. We write about all things career, make original documentaries, and share tons of other untold developer stories from around the world.

Silent cessation is a whole new form of work-life balance. Contrary to what the name might suggest, silent termination is not an official termination of your job. It’s just a change in how people approach their jobs.

The catalyst behind this movement is simple but powerful: a common, overwhelming desire deep in the minds of the new wave of employees, predominantly Gen Z, to find a balance to the long hours spent at desks and computers or at work be in front of any other screen.

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Gen Z employees are just entering the workforce and are dealing with the aftermath of the suspended, overhauled traditions that their Millennial predecessors endured. These traditions are part of a broader belief system rooted in a culture that values ​​those who devote their lives to work and neglect their personal lives, resulting in a generation of overworked, burdened, burned out, and exhausted.

The demand for work-life balance

So, that’s where the aforementioned transformation comes in, which is mostly focused on the tech industries. It is essentially the product of the transition from Above and Beyond to Acting Your Wage. Under this new model, the typical employee no longer accepts or tolerates excessive office hours and takes control of their lives, prioritizing personal matters over their work responsibilities.

On the surface, this new idea (increasingly favored by younger employees and increasingly deplored by company veterans) appears to be responding to a fleeting desire to work less. Still, quitting quietly is a broader, more powerful, and more inclusive response to a culture that has so far normalized burnout and exhaustion.

So quitting quiet is a reassuring choice, it’s a growing, powerful revolution that’s changing the way the corporate world approaches its relationship with employees and the way workers think. Employers can no longer expect their employees to put their work ahead of their personal lives and families.

It’s not just cultural. Many European labor laws protect workers’ right to latitude. Even Elon Musk, who is going through an overworked jack-of-all-trades phase, is having trouble firing European Twitter employees (instead of firing them) because of these laws, which prevent employers from contacting employees outside of working hours and also give them grants due process before being pushed out of their jobs.

Quiet is a significant move, but it also means you still have a relationship with an employer who wields considerable power over you and is consuming precious time you’d rather be using, say, a 10,000-hour developer to become. So why not make the truly liberating decision to just quit? Of course, taking into account all the parameters that accompany this decision.

Take the plunge

Even though quietly quitting made headlines in 2022, actually quitting has quietly (pun intended) become an HR darling. The term “great resignation”, as managers and consulting firms called it, has also shaken the professional world in the past two years. During the Great Retirement, increasing numbers of professionals left their posts and refocused their careers, giving another twist to the concept of “doing what is necessary and that’s it.”

Some professionals haven’t changed their careers, just the way they interact with their work. A Stack Overflow survey found that many developers went from full-time jobs to freelance, independent work systems while doing essentially the same thing: typing code.

While these insights should motivate someone struggling with the decision to leave a job (in the sense of “if everyone does it…”), they’re not the only truths a struggling worker can use to motivate. While job insecurity and a looming global recession may make people reconsider quitting, the market tells a different story.

The tech industry is in high demand for programmers: jobs and pay, as detailed in our salary reports, are plentiful. Actually quitting your job to become a full-time programmer might seem like a daunting feat, but as our research tells us, it can quickly pay off with a good bang-for-buck ratio.

The best part? You don’t need a university degree or years of training to enter the job market. A short-term boot camp can get you off to a good start. As our deep dive into bootcamps showed, in 2020, 79% of bootcamp attendees found a job 180 days after completing their course.

Quitting and starting over really works

Due to the lack of job openings and the incredibly high demand for skilled programmers, combined with the many accessible options to learn to code, getting a job in programming is a very achievable goal. As the insights of the Great Resignation show, it is becoming increasingly popular.

A 2020 Course Report report on coding bootcamps found that the average graduate had seven years of experience in an unrelated field, a college degree, and no previous coding experience. This career-changing move may seem like a giant leap, but it will allow you to break free from the constraints of the corporate world and work on your terms.

Quitting your day job may be the most liberating decision you’ll ever make: you’ll be in control of your schedule and more in control of who you choose to work for. And hey, you can be on the receiving end of a very competitive paycheck. So while quietly quitting is definitely the more leisurely and soothing choice, sometimes letting go of everything and starting over on your terms can be the more liberating choice.

We hope you have a better idea of ​​what quitting could do for you. We absolutely do not recommend doing it lightly, it is important to weigh all your decisions and do what is best for you. But hey, if you’re making that decision, you can read our How to Tell Your Boss You’re Quitting article for inspiration and ideas.

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